flesh. Unlike what we have seen to be the practice among the American
savages, the tincture was here introduced by the same blow by which the
skin was punctured. The substance employed was a species of lamp black,
formed of the smoke of an oily nut which the natives burned to give them
light.

The practice of tattooing is now, we believe, discontinued at Otaheite;
but the progress of civilization has not yet altogether banished it at
the Sandwich Islands. When Lord Byron was at Hawaii, in 1825, he found
it used as a mark of mourning, though some still had themselves tattooed
merely by way of ornament. On the death of one of the late kings of the
island, it is stated that all the chiefs had his name and the date of
his death engraved in this manner on their arms. The ladies here, it
seems, follow the very singular practice of tattooing the tips of their
tongues, in memory of their departed friends. In the Tonga, or Friendly
Islands, it would appear from Mariner's very minute description of the
operation as there practised, as at Otaheite and elsewhere, the
instrument used is always a sort of comb, having from six up to fifty or
sixty teeth. There are, Mariner tells us, certain patterns or forms of
the tattoo, and the individual may choose which he likes. On the brown
skins of the natives the marks, which are imprinted by means of a
tincture made of soot, have a black appearance; but on that of a
European, their colour is a fine blue. The women here are not tattooed,
though a few of them have some marks on the inside of their fingers. At
the Fiji Islands, on the contrary, in the neighbourhood of the Tonga
group, the men are not tattooed, but the women are.

The term "tattoo" is not known in New Zealand, the name given to the
marks, which are elsewhere so called, being in this country "Moko," or,
as it has been more generally written, from a habit which the natives